Warsinger - Chapter 32

Fuck text numerals.
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Twenty minutes later, I was recovering in the hospital on the bed beside Vash’s. Masha was gingerly palpitating the enlarged black void on my shoulder. The triangular patch of dead pixels had been an unchanging bit of weirdness since my first week in Archemi, the place where a piece of wood had glitched through my shoulder. Now it looked more like a starburst, and was about the size of an apple. The surface of it was solid, but not in the same way as skin. It wasn’t metallic, either. It literally didn’t feel like anything, but you couldn’t push your fingers through it and wiggle them out the other side. 

“Well, I must admit I am stumped,” she said, delicately probing it with a needle. “My first thought was that it was necrotized flesh, like the stuff we scraped off your lovely Baru friend, but it doesn’t appear to be flesh at all. It is like part of your body has become something else entirely. Do you feel that?”

“Nope.” I looked down to see she’d sunk about a quarter inch of needle into it. “Not a damn thing.”

“You must be careful. Whatever it is, it acts somewhat like a cancer.” She drew the needle out and examined the end for blood. There was none.

Cancer. Now there was an un-fun word I never expected to encounter in a videogame. “Do you know what a ‘Corruption’ status is? Status, debuff… not actually sure what it is.”

“I have some notion,” Vash said from behind us. “And I’ll tell you, if you do me a favor.”

We looked over. He was sitting up by himself, and was pale, rumpled, but less sweaty and definitely less sick. The stump of his shoulder was bound up in bandages, clean and uninfected. His fever had broken, and he was back to 60% maximum HP. Given he was the highest-level NPC here other than Masha, that put him about even with me in terms of HP and Stats.

“Hit me,” I said.

His eyes tracked down to my shoulder. “My lovely Masterhealer, this is a rather sensitive subject. It is yasak, taboo knowledge. Would you be so kind as to leave us to speak?”

Masha looked down, quickly touched her fingers to her forehead and lips, and then stood. “Of course, Brother. Did you know this rogue never told me he was a favorite of the Black God? If I’d known, I might not have charged him to apprentice to me.”

“Me?” I pointed at my chin.

“Yes, you. Obviously not Brother Dorha.” Masha’s characteristic peevishness returned. “I will be back in when you are done. Try not to fall on anything sharp.”

Vash waited until Masha closed the door. He sat cross-legged, his remaining hand resting in his lap. With the bandages across his chest and the blanket over his knees, he almost looked like an actual monk. Kind of.

“You can do my favor while we talk,” he said. “Get on the bed and sit behind me. I need you to play hairdresser. I’d do it myself, but even I am not dexterous enough to manage this great big mop with one hand. Istvan has many talents, but the patient art of braiding is not one of them.”

His hair had definitely taken a beating these last several weeks. All Tuun men, self included, used their hair to indicate their social status. Having it shaved on the sides, then styled into braids or cornrows worn past the belt was pretty typical for warriors. Miners and laborers wore it shorter; farmers tended to wear it loose and pulled back. For a Baru like Vash, part of their vows included never cutting their hair, which was a living memorial to the work they did for the Tuun community.

“What are all these different kinds of beads for?” I asked. Being Tuun, I’d had the cultural knowledge of how to create hairstyles like these uploaded during creation. Just as well, because I’d kept short military cuts for my entire life and wouldn’t have known where to start IRL.

He grunted. “The bone beads and rings were given to me by the families of the dead I have tended. The amber beads are for children born and lives saved: flies for children, beetles for recovered patients. The bronze prayer rings are given by the abbots on attainment of certain skills. The onyx are gifts from my master.”

“Your master? Like, your martial arts teacher?”

“Among other things,” he replied. “Master Gorten is the reason I’m not dead, a drunken idiot roiling with syphilis in a gutter somewhere, or both. The first set of onyx beads are given to a novice when they are accepted for teaching, and braided high up in the hair. The second set is given when training is completed.”

“Huh.” I unpicked one thin braid at a time, setting the beads aside in order. I could do this kind of thing with near-supernatural speed and relatively little energy – and after what happened with Karalti and the assassin, it was oddly soothing. “And the red beads?”

He paused for a moment. “Dead kin.”

There were fifteen red beads. That was a lot of kin to lose. “Sorry. If it’s anything, I can sympathize.”

“You mentioned something about a plague in your history,” Vash replied. “So in all likelihood, yes, you can. Anyway, you need to sleep after all the excitement tonight, so let me answer your questions about corruption, hmm?”

“I mostly want to know what it is.”

Vash settled into silence for a few moments. “Well, to say I ‘know’ would be a conceit. But I have been thinking about those two Ilian flunkies – Lucien and Violet? – and their flying abortions. The sight of a mutated dragon is likely as disturbing to you as it is to those of us who have worshipped their likeness for the better part of twenty millennia-”

“Twenty?” I frowned. “Rin and Ebisa said humans have only been here five thousand.”

“That is because they are Mercurions, and this is the New World.” Vash snorted. “And dragons and we Tuun are from Daun. Daun is the old world. We have songs, oral traditions, magical traditions that go back almost as far as those of the Meewfolk and Aesari and the Tulaq. Both of the latter, the Aesari and Tulaq, are extinct, but the Tulaq and Dragons co-existed for the longest time, and also with us, for most of our history. They were a long-lived species, and impeccable lore-keepers.”

“I wonder why I don’t know anything about them?” I quickly unpicked and braided, unpicked and braided. “I’ve seen some Tulaq mummies and some pictures of them, but I don’t know any stories or anything. They were like… intelligent quadrupeds, right? Well, sexapeds. Four legs, two wings.”

“Yes. Beautiful creatures. You are Starborn, incarnated into the world without kin or hearth. If you had, you would know more about them. Herding is boring. All we had to do is tell stories.” Vash sat patiently as I worked, showing no responses as I combed and tugged out frizzled hair that was startling to lock. “But anyway… to return to my point, Lucien and Violetta and their dragons gave me pause. They have a chilling, unnatural presence, like the sword Suri showed me when you came in just before. Perhaps the oddest experience I have ever had is being surrounded by the army of the dead – the most unnatural thing I could think of in sane times – and yet facing down something that was even more horrifying. The sight of the dragons and that sword makes me retch. That unnatural repulsion… I would say that is the essence of ‘corruption’.”

“Hmm.” I paused to rub my numb shoulder. “Yeah. It’s weird, though. I keep getting these notifications saying I’m immune to Corruption. Matir told me the same thing.”

“Interesting.”

“Yeah. Even so, weird shit keeps happening to me that makes me think that can’t be right. The shoulder thing, for one. For another, every time I die, my amnesia gets worse. The last time it happened, I couldn’t even remember my own name. It’s like sudden onset dementia… I don’t even know if I’ve lost memories, or if my personality has changed or something.”

“But touching Karalti restores your memories, correct?”

“Yeah. It’s getting harder and harder to deal with, though. More painful. More dangerous.” I nodded, deftly fitting rings on before plaiting them in. “I don’t know if I believe I’m immune. My shoulder says otherwise.”

“Perhaps the symptoms you experience are proof of immunity?” Vash replied. “Take smallpox, for example. If you succumb to smallpox, you die. If you survive, you live, but are almost always left with scars. Immunity does not preclude suffering; you may suffer, AND be immune. Perhaps these symptoms are your corruption scars, hmm?”

That was more comforting than I’d expected. I was about to thank him when my HUD emitted a purring chirp, and a red exclamation point flashed in the corner of my eye: a global alert. Vash stiffened as the My hands froze as I pulled the alert over.

[World Alert: The Ilian Empire has invaded the Kingdom of Revala!]

“You have got to be fucking kidding me,” Vash and I both said at the same time.